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Anime Movie Rewind: your name.
Having daydreamed and imagined and anticipated for quite some time a grand scheme of “sampling TV anime through the years,” once I’d decided it was about time to record something definite it didn’t take long to set down just what sample episodes I’d watch. The idea of starting a little earlier by using the last weeks of this old year to watch some anime movies as well was more sudden, but picking “a film per decade, working backwards” wasn’t altogether difficult. There were more movies to choose from between some arbitrary calendar numbers than between others, of course. After having thought myself fortunate to have found a movie from the past three years I hadn’t seen yet, for the full calendrical decade before them I was ready to return to a movie I had seen before, Makoto Shinkai’s your name.
After getting to see that movie at the movies, I’d bought it on Blu-Ray only to have never quite gathered up the time to watch it again. In finding the resolve to return at last to “a lightly comedic tale of body-swapping that transitions into a long-distance relationship and then to reflections on loss and natural disaster,” I also found some details that had slipped my mind. The film did continue to look impressive even on a smaller screen, although sometimes I can wonder about “bits of the story not shown” even as I suppose that has some risk of “nitpicking as a cheap substitute for any sort of real, articulate analysis.” I did find myself still pondering thoughts I’d begun having as I’d settled on watching the movie, namely whether the movie’s box-office success and a certain amount of “Makoto Shinkai’s made something impressive enough to not just be ‘someone who made a short animation impressive for being a one-man project’ any more” had slackened all the worries that “we need, we demand, someone who can make respectable anime movies” and led to the realisation of other casually acceptable anime movies (and their official availability over here, too). Of course, there has been an undercurrent of “now Shinkai just has to do it again.” I did happen to notice a line near the end of your name that seemed to anticipate the more controversial conclusion of Weathering With You. That later movie remaining the last one I’ve seen in a theatre to date (and I’d much rather be able to mention that than the one I saw just before it) does leave me aware he should have a new film opening in Japan soon; I can at least think there’d be something to that new film being the one I return to a movie theatre for.
After getting to see that movie at the movies, I’d bought it on Blu-Ray only to have never quite gathered up the time to watch it again. In finding the resolve to return at last to “a lightly comedic tale of body-swapping that transitions into a long-distance relationship and then to reflections on loss and natural disaster,” I also found some details that had slipped my mind. The film did continue to look impressive even on a smaller screen, although sometimes I can wonder about “bits of the story not shown” even as I suppose that has some risk of “nitpicking as a cheap substitute for any sort of real, articulate analysis.” I did find myself still pondering thoughts I’d begun having as I’d settled on watching the movie, namely whether the movie’s box-office success and a certain amount of “Makoto Shinkai’s made something impressive enough to not just be ‘someone who made a short animation impressive for being a one-man project’ any more” had slackened all the worries that “we need, we demand, someone who can make respectable anime movies” and led to the realisation of other casually acceptable anime movies (and their official availability over here, too). Of course, there has been an undercurrent of “now Shinkai just has to do it again.” I did happen to notice a line near the end of your name that seemed to anticipate the more controversial conclusion of Weathering With You. That later movie remaining the last one I’ve seen in a theatre to date (and I’d much rather be able to mention that than the one I saw just before it) does leave me aware he should have a new film opening in Japan soon; I can at least think there’d be something to that new film being the one I return to a movie theatre for.